The government today announced it will give incentives to exporters under duty drawback scheme. Speaking to media in New Delhi, Finance Secretary R S Gujral said the scheme will cover 1,100 items. He, however, said the government will end the tax break under the Duty Entitlement Pass Book (DEPB) for exporters with effect from 30th of this month.

Our correspondent reports, under the DEPB scheme, the government used to reimburse exporters for some 80 billion rupees of taxes paid on imported supplies.

Mr. Gujral said most of the items which are already covered under the duty drawback schedule will suffer a minor reduction in the existing drawback rates. Mr. Goyal said on export of these items, the tax refunds would be reduced by 1-3 per cent. He said, since tax incentives for these goods will now be available under the Duty Drawback Scheme (DDS), the total number of items under the DDS would increase to about 4,000 from present 2,835.